This guide is my overall entry point recommendations for Summoning synergies to support skilling (not doing combat here, yet). These recommendations will help to make
Summoning less daunting and overall cover most aspects of the skill. There are one or two niche situations that the remainder of the synergies pertain to, but you can research those at your own pace when you feel more comfortable with the skill. The goal of this guide is to act as an entry point aimed at making the skill seem much less confusing and make it more approachable. Once you have your foot in the door, the skill will start to make more sense.
I have seen several people now say that they avoid Summoning completely, probably because it seems convoluted to them. This was especially evident with the recent April Fools mode with a wave of people asking how to max
Summoning as their last skill. This is quite unfortunate, as
Summoning is designed to be trained alongside most other skills in the game, and dedicating training of the skill is very slow. You get the vast majority of your experience from *using* the tablets, not from making them. In addition, all of the
Summoning effects pay dividends on the time and resources invested into them. When starting out you will just barely break even (the yield from summoning roughly equals the investment), but as compounding effects from the mastery checkpoints, 95% pool and
Summoning Skillcape come into play, you will start heavily profiting, as you have to spend less time and resources making tablets.
My recommendation for starting out is always Ent with
Woodcutting until you unlock
Octopus at level 15. Then fish with
Octopus active until level 25, at which point you can start utilising the
Octopus +
Pig synergy. This is one of the best synergies and is unlocked at a very low level. You can do this to bolster your profit from {{Skill|Fishing}. The extra cooked fish from the synergy can be directly recycled into making more tablets, and with some preservation and mastery levels you will soon start earning more from bonus fish than you spend on
Summoning Shard (Green) and
Summoning Shard (Silver).
The next recommendation is the Leprechaun +
Monkey synergy while thieving the
Fisherman. This is one of the best money making methods from
Thieving, only outclassed by high level methods with the
Knight and
Princess, both of which require
Thieving Skillcape and passive slot from
Into the Mist and so they have much, much higher requirements.
As a general rule, you always want to be running summoning tablets for any skills that allow them. There are situations where there aren't really any useful synergies (e.g. Herblore) but even in this case you still want to be running the base tablet for the raw bonuses (non-synergy effects). Remember, tablets are consumed at a 2:1 ratio, where the skill's base tablet is consumed twice (once for the base effect and once for the synergy) while the secondary tablet is consumed once per synergy activation. You should get
Summoning to 99 relatively early into your account progression, and it will soon become your second highest skill behind
Farming as you will be utilising the synergies constantly.
Here are my general recommendations for the main synergies to focus on for each skill:
Woodcutting
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | |
---|---|---|
Ent | Ent | |
Bear |
Firemaking
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | |
---|---|---|
Octopus | Octopus | |
Pig |
Pig synergy doesn't work for special fish like Raw Magic Fish, so use Octopus on its own in this case.
Cooking
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | ||
---|---|---|---|
Pig | Pig | Pig | |
Ent | Salamander | Mole |
Ent synergy for the most part, but Salamander can be used if the cooking interval is quite short. The Mole synergy coupled with short duration foods ( Raw Sardine are optimal) is the best source of Coal Ore in the game, for those who still need it.
Mining
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | ||
---|---|---|---|
Mole | Mole | Mole | |
Crow | Monkey | Bear |
Crow for mining Rune Essence. Monkey for mining Silver Ore or Gold Ore, and Bear otherwise.
Smithing
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | ||
---|---|---|---|
Salamander | Salamander | Salamander | |
Bear | Devil | Crow |
Thieving
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | |
---|---|---|
Leprechaun | Leprechaun | |
Monkey | Devil |
Crafting
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | ||
---|---|---|---|
Monkey | Monkey | Monkey | |
Pig | Salamander |
Runecrafting
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | ||
---|---|---|---|
Crow | Crow | Crow | |
Devil | Octopus | Bear |
Herblore
Slot | Item |
---|---|
Bear |
In addition to this, you have a choice of many recipes to use for each tablet. Overall, my recommendation for each tablet